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Trump's Government Of Spite: Political Performance Art For Assholes
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/10/30/trumps-government-of-spite-political-performance-art-for-assholes/A couple weeks ago, as millions of Americans took to the streets in what may have been the largest single day of protest in U.S. history, the President of the United States responded by… posting a video of himself literally dumping shit on citizens.
Not a policy response. Not an attempt at dialogue. Not even a coherent defense of whatever decisions prompted the protests. Just a middle finger, dressed up as content, optimized for maximum engagement from his base and maximum rage from everyone else.
Welcome to governance-by-trolling, where the entire apparatus of the federal government has been repurposed into a machine for generating likes, shares, and the tears of political opponents.
This is worse than normal political combat. Political opponents have always attacked each other, sometimes viciously. But those attacks were typically in service of something—a policy goal, an electoral advantage, a governing philosophy. This is categorically different: a government that has replaced policymaking entirely with performance art designed solely to upset the people who voted against them.
The evidence is everywhere, and it’s getting worse. When a reporter asks the White House a straightforward question about policy, the official response is literally “your mom”—not as a joke that slipped out, but as official White House communications strategy. The Vice President continues to use a racist slur against a sitting Senator, not because it advances any policy position, but because it gets applause from the MAGA base. It takes thirty seconds reviewing any official government account on social media to see them posting childish memes insulting and attacking their political rivals.
Not a policy response. Not an attempt at dialogue. Not even a coherent defense of whatever decisions prompted the protests. Just a middle finger, dressed up as content, optimized for maximum engagement from his base and maximum rage from everyone else.
Welcome to governance-by-trolling, where the entire apparatus of the federal government has been repurposed into a machine for generating likes, shares, and the tears of political opponents.
This is worse than normal political combat. Political opponents have always attacked each other, sometimes viciously. But those attacks were typically in service of something—a policy goal, an electoral advantage, a governing philosophy. This is categorically different: a government that has replaced policymaking entirely with performance art designed solely to upset the people who voted against them.
The evidence is everywhere, and it’s getting worse. When a reporter asks the White House a straightforward question about policy, the official response is literally “your mom”—not as a joke that slipped out, but as official White House communications strategy. The Vice President continues to use a racist slur against a sitting Senator, not because it advances any policy position, but because it gets applause from the MAGA base. It takes thirty seconds reviewing any official government account on social media to see them posting childish memes insulting and attacking their political rivals.
Trump’s Government Of Spite: Political Performance Art For Assholes
— Techdirt (@techdirt.com) 2025-10-30T17:52:17Z
A couple weeks ago, as hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets in what may have been the largest single day of protest in U.S. history, the President of the United States responded by… posting a video of himself…